Faith versus Individual Rights (of Children)

For a few days I’ve mulled over whether or not I should comment on this story:

Accepting a plea bargain that her attorney described as unprecedented in American jurisprudence, a 22-year-old Maryland woman yesterday agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants in the death of her son under the condition that charges against her be dropped if the child rises from the dead.
…

The boy’s mother, Ria Ramkissoon, is shaping up as prosecutors’ star witness against a 40-year-old Baltimore woman named Queen Antoinette. Prosecutors allege that Queen Antoinette led a small cult, called One Mind Ministries, based in a West Baltimore rowhouse. In early 2007, prosecutors say, Queen Antoinette instructed Ramkissoon and others to deprive Javon of food and water because he didn’t say “amen” before breakfast.

I’m inclined to make a comparison to infant circumcision for religious reasons. It’s easy to make even though there are many steps between the two points, but I worried about the perception that I’m claiming a moral equivalence between circumcision and death. I am not, so I stayed away. Then I read this entry by Rogier van Bakel, which I think gets the angle correct (emphasis in original):

Yeah, no insanity there. I mean, since she felt compelled by God to let her baby die a drawn-out, miserable death, why would anyone question her mental capacity? That just wouldn’t be respectful to the Big Guy, and to people of faith, now would it?

I’m more or less agnostic on religion, and I don’t care what people believe. My only concern is how our civil government uses religion as a guidance on rules. Specifically, I’m concerned about how government treats what one person does to another in the name of religious faith.

This case demonstrates that we collectively believe our government must not rebuke religious intent in individuals who inflict objectively harmful practices on another. And we must punish only the most egregious examples. In America, belief in a higher being is a sign of increased rationality. We mistakenly accept that parents may undertake certain unjustifiable actions against their children because we do not wish to imply that the verifiable is superior to the unverifiable. That is wrong.

This case is obvious, so the deference to religion in pursuit of convictions is understandable, if not entirely acceptable. The mother is obviously incompetent, so we shouldn’t pretend that she is. That will only perpetuate further violations of the rights of children because it gives religious justifications credibility they do not deserve.

Has the free market failed?

Andrew Sullivan posted this letter from a reader about problems with the private market for health insurance.

I’m one of the 40+ million Americas that the market has efficiently removed from health care rolls. I was laid off from a corporate job and make ends meet with freelance work while I job hunt in this rather difficult job market.

I bought a private policy — because COBRA was twice as expensive — a year or so ago from the company that held my employer-sponsored plan (rhymes with Clue Loss / Rue Field). I figured this would make continuity of prescriptions and care pretty straightforward, and instead found, when I went to the pharmacy, that those carry-over prescriptions were no longer covered, because my seasonal allergies were now a pre-existing condition. Yes, it’s true that leaving health care in private hands reduces political corruption, but there’s one thing that I’ve seen happen with long term political corruption: indictments. You don’t see that too much with corporate corruption, do you?

I see the point that there’s a problem, but this is an issue of distorted incentives. The government started the process by taxing income to the point where employer-subsidized health insurance became a rational perk. This has lingered to the current day. If insurance had remained an individual decision, would the market produce this result? Assuming the individual could still afford the premiums upon losing a job, a separate issue, it’s logical to assume that there would be no reason to change insurance plans when losing a job. The tax/regulatory structure created by generations of politicians produced a system weaker than it would otherwise be. Why should anyone believe that further government intervention would solve the problem better than government retreat?

More Spending Increases for the Non-Rich?

The Washington Post makes the same mistake in an editorial that I criticized on Tuesday.

AT A TIME of soaring deficits and growing needs, the Senate is weighing whether the wealthiest of wealthy Americans should get a tax break worth some $250 billion over 10 years. …

If you guess that there’s no discussion of not spending so much money, or even an explanation of growing needs, you’ll be correct. Even though the Post’s editors tell us this tax “would hardly be punitive”, they justify themselves by saying “[w]hy in the world should these folks get more of a tax cut?”. Perhaps we should consider the idea that our government should treat everyone equally rather than picking a politically-convenient minority to act as the nation’s ATM-of-last-resort.

Not that we should be surprised. The editors conclude the first paragraph with this:

… aren’t there better uses of hundreds of billions of dollars than reducing taxes even further for the tiny sliver of Americans subject to the estate tax?

Who gets to decide what better uses exist? Those who have the money (that was already taxed as income in some form)? Or those who vote to take it from them? This is a test of whether or not one believes that central planning is more effective and more legitimate than individual choices. I do not think it is, on either front.

Nor am I convinced by the Post’s evidence-free implication that lower estate taxes will harm charities. Such social engineering is hardly justified, even if the Post offered convincing evidence. What people do with their property is their business alone. But our history is full of examples of the wealthy leaving their estates to philanthropic ventures rather than leaving their heirs with every remaining penny they saved.

The solution to the problem is (A) or (A).

On the general subject of taxation, Matt Yglesias
defends sustained and increasing progressivity (emphasis added):

As Ed says, the argument is that “we can’t have progressives taxes because somebody’s rich uncle might not have the wherewithal to subsidize somebody’s business start-up.”

I’m not going to dignify this with a response. I’ll just note that Schramm is president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation and I believe he was in the room when I first heard the “rich uncle” argument, so I may have been present at the creation of this particular talking point. Meanwhile, the crippling long-term budget deficits that will result from refusing to raise new revenues are not going to be doing any wonders for entrepreneurs. And perhaps more directly to the point, the lack of a guarantee of affordable health coverage is a major impediment to entrepreneurship in the United States. The status quo systematically discourages talented, skilled people form leaving jobs at existing firms in order to strike out on their own, and this is one of the things the administration is trying to address in its budget proposals.

It’s very useful to frame problems with the solution in mind.

Long-term budget deficits occur because Congress does not match spending to tax revenue. (They are crippling because Congress believes that politics is more important than either economics or accounting.) There are at least two solutions. Congress can raise new revenue, as Yglesias suggests. Within that solution, it can raise taxes on high-income Americans or lower-income Americans. Fairness and equality in treatment suggest that everyone should share the burden, if we are to raise taxes. That’s beyond my point here, so I’ll back up and reiterate: Congress can raise new revenue. Congress can also reduce spending. Is that not an acceptable option? Ignoring it reeks of a preference for social engineering over responsibility.

Nor would I write that the lack of a guarantee of affordable1 health coverage is the impediment implied. If person X quits her job to start a business, she loses her medical coverage after a certain period of (more expensive) COBRA coverage. Tying health insurance to an employer is the problem. If her business becomes successful, then her employees will be burdened as she was if they want to leave. The system is flawed and needs to be fixed because it limits individual choices. We should begin our search for a solution from that starting point. Changing our treatment of health insurance to resemble other decisions individuals make for themselves independent of how they earn income is a possible solution Mr. Yglesias ignores.

The general theme within Mr. Yglesias’ framing appears to be a push for equality of outcome rather than equality of treatment. Equality of outcome will never happen in practice for precisely the reasons that his proposed solutions are possible in America. The political atmosphere makes it possible to treat others “more equal” by pitting one group against another, with the politicians conveniently acting as final arbiter. Endorsing that system is at least an implicit statement that control is fine as long as you are the one in control. It’s either that, or the person proposing such a statement is ignorant. I don’t think Mr. Yglesias is ignorant.

1 I will ignore the issue of affordability here. Such a subjective word requires a much deeper analysis, including the trade-offs, that I’m not interested in addressing in this post. Let it suffice that Mr. Yglesias and I probably agree very little on the matter.

Gordon Gekko is a caricature.

I don’t want to rehash liber-al-terianism again because I think the recent discussions in the blogosphere reached a reasonable conclusion that liber-al-terianism is designed more to clean the libertarian house and convert liberals to a more effective approach to our (perceived-to-be) common goals. I firmly endorse that. But after reading this entry from Matt Yglesias, I’m reminded of one reason why I think the latter goal is forever doomed to failure.

… the more it looks like a huge swathe of the big money game was just an elaborate fraud, the more an undercurrent of respect for the very boldness and criminality of Madoff’s fraud comes through. He plead guilty in a court of law, while the architects of Citibank’s bankruptcy remain wildly wealthier than the average American—people who no doubt would be completely competent to destroy a major business as well as anyone else—slinking around somewhere and various finance types skulk around the streets of New York feeling sorry for themselves because congress might screw around with their bonuses.

If one of the more prominent liberal voices in America believes that Madoff’s fraud is comparable to the financial sector’s problems, there is no common ground to share. There is no liberal receptivity to libertarian ideas. Liberals think libertarians hold up failed corporate executives who run to the government for welfare as Randian heroes, so witnessing them be wrong on multiple issues shouldn’t surprise.

Nor does this give me hope if we could find such ground (emphasis added):

… On the one hand you have people basically inclined toward Hiltzik’s that a lot of the people making the big bucks for the past 10 years are basically scammers who lucked into the ability to siphon tons of money out of the economy without really doing anything useful or valuable, and between people who think that they’re genuinely smart hard-working people who just happen to deserve to pay somewhat more in income taxes than they currently do.

Under our current tax system, there are people who should pay more. They are the people who receive more in services than they pay in taxes. That is unfairness and inequality in our system. We should remove such welfare for those who don’t truly need it.

But that’s not what he means. The highest earners – who already pay most of the income taxes in America – deserve to pay “somewhat” more. He never states why someone who already pays a higher percentage of her income than most deserves to pay more, so I’ll infer. As he states in another post:

If you think of a talented and ambitious businessman, after all, you have to remember that you’re talking about a guy who, unlike normal people, mainly focuses his life on earning as much money as possible. That’s a weird state of mind in many ways. …

Teachers, janitors, steel workers, cab drivers, engineers, waitresses, and journalists, those are the noble people who are interested in how they serve, not how much they make? They’re so noble they’d turn down a higher wage?

Until liberals understand that subjective economic factors and outcomes are relevant only to the parties involved, I’ll see liberals as little more than central planner wannabes. They’re roadblocks. The current political power structure in America offers no incentive for cooperation. Liberals won’t bother, so libertarians shouldn’t waste the effort.

On Widespread Gender-Based Double Standards

One more story for today that draws a parallel to the gender-bias in child genital cutting in America. (Note: The names of the minors should be redacted, but they’re obviously known, so I’m leaving them in the excerpt.)

Alan Jepsen was playing videogames at his home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, when the cops came knocking on his door. He was handcuffed in front of his sister and thrown in jail. In the words of his attorney, Jeffrey Purnell, “This child, this 17-year-old high-school kid, had to spend a week in jail—they locked him up and they put him in jail with grown-ups.”

His crime: Having sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend. And, perhaps, being a boy.

The day after Alan’s arrest, Sheboygan authorities arrested Norma Guthrie, also 17, for having sex with her 14-year-old boyfriend. Norma, however, did not have to spend a single day in jail. She was released immediately, on signature bond, while Alan was held on a $1,000 cash bond, which his family could not afford. Sheboygan County Assistant District Attorney Jim Haasch is handling both cases.

The disparity in the punishment of these 17-year-olds, both accused of having sex with the 14-year-olds they were dating, goes much deeper. Haasch charged Alan with a Class C felony, which, according to court records obtained by The Daily Beast, carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years. Norma, on the other hand, was charged only with a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum sentence of nine months in jail.

If the facts are as they appear, this is despicable. And entirely predictable. Males are viewed as possessing endless sexual appetities. Females are viewed as sexual victims. The typical defense of the non-existent ethical distinction between genital cutting on male and female minors rests solely on the mistaken notion that female genital cutting is strictly designed to limit the female’s sexuality, if not destroy it completely. (And imposed by women, even when it isn’t.) For males, we pretend that potential medical benefits dismiss the same ethical issues involved in female genital cutting because parents say their intentions are good. Anyway, we’re told, males enjoy sex more than enough, and genital cutting doesn’t affect male sexual experience. And if it does, although it doesn’t, that’s exclusively a good thing, except removing nerve endings couldn’t possibly alter sexual experience, so why are you worried?

Here’s an example:

Between 2002 and 2003, Turkish scientists studied how circumcision influences male sexual functions. They only studied men who were circumcised for aesthetic or religious reasons. The average age of those surveyed was 22.3 years old, and their sexual functions were equal before and after circumcision. After the survey was carried out, scientists concluded that circumcising grown men does not negatively effect their sexual functions. On the contrary, the fact that it causes a delay in ejaculation is more of an advantage than a complication.

Circumcision affects sexual function. It delays orgasm, which is an objective claim. Whether or not that is positive or negative is subjective to the individual, yet it’s treated as an objective finding. It’s not stated here, but most commonly the argument relies on some defense that women prefer this outcome, so it is good. (Check virtually any propaganda by Brian Morris or Edgar Schoen.)

If a man likes large breasts, he does not have the right to impose breast augmentation on his daughter to achieve this positive outcome. We understand that, of course, because it involves controlling a female’s sexuality. But we embrace a double standard when the roles are reversed, even though the ethical issue is the same. We must not deviate from the belief that men are predators and women are delicate flowers. So, no, I’m not surprised that there is a double standard involving prosecution of these two Wisconsin teens.

Original link via Radley Balko.

New Jersey Worries About Body Hair Removal

I’ve seen this story floating around for a few days, from multiple sources.

Things could get hairy in New Jersey this summer for women who sport revealing bikinis or a little bit less.

The painful Brazilian wax and its intimate derivatives are in danger of being stripped from salon and spa menus if a recent proposal to ban genital waxing is passed by the state’s Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling.

Before I get into my brief take, I’ll stress what I think explains this, which is what Brad Warbiany pointed out at The Liberty Papers:

[Cherry Hill, New Jersey salon owner Linda] Orsuto said that the proposal may be the state’s way of diverting a long-established salon procedure “perfected by aestheticians” to the medical community, where hair can be removed via laser treatment by dermatologists.

As Mr. Warbiany stated perfectly:

Follow the lobbying money.

Those four words explain most government actions, no?

**********

My take: If this passes, it will be illegal in New Jersey for a woman to have her pubic hair waxed from her genitals, but she will still be free to have her son’s healthy foreskin surgically removed for any reason she can imagine. We have a long way to go before people understand individual liberty.

Check Your Premises

From England:

It took a death threat to stop Abdi’s wife from circumcising their two daughters, aged 2 and 4. She called him from Somalia while on holiday to say she wanted to carry out the procedure.

Abdi, a London-based Somali, said that his wife’s eagerness to circumcise their daughters was fuelled by a combination of religious, cultural and tribal pressures placed on her after she took the girls to Somalia for a brief summer break last year.

But he refused to be swayed, despite his wife’s argument that the girls would improve their chances of attracting a good husband because they would be perceived as being more traditional and pure.

First, notice the third paragraph. I can’t and won’t begin a detailed analysis because it would be speculation, but the information there suggests that this reasoning is at most a difference of degree between this and what Western parents often choose for their sons. The focus is on how to make the child more attractive to a future partner, not what the child needs. Attempt to build a defense of infant male circumcision on the grounds of potential benefits, but ultimately this reasoning must make no distinction between those alleged-but-not-really medical reasons and the nonsense that what the child’s future sexual partners might want is relevant to what to do to his genitals. The whole notion is absurd.

Second, this one example proves nothing. However, it demonstrates that those who perpetuate the belief that female genital cutting is exclusively perpetuated by men are mistaken. At some point we have to lay down our agenda of blame and figure out how to stop these violations. I suspect the desire to blame is responsible for much of the inability to see the similarities between male and female genital cutting. Medically unnecessary genital cutting on a non-consenting person is unethical. That is a statement of principle free from the ramifications of gender-specific reasoning and outcomes. It considers only the victim. That’s what matters.

Public Health Officials Always Know Their Conclusion

Stories like this warrant mentioning because the hypocrisy isn’t going away:

Suriname has launched a three-month pilot project offering free circumcisions in a bid to cut sexually transmitted diseases, Health Minister Celsius Waterberg said Friday.
…

Some two percent of the Suriname population is HIV-infected, about 10,000 people, and the project aims to carry out the operations on 100 men aged between four and 21 years old over the next three months.

How many four-year-old men do you know? When public health officials discuss the potential reduction in HIV risk from voluntary, adult male circumcision, they always forget voluntary and adult. Always.

If successful then the project will spread nationwide, Waterberg said.

This circumcision program seeks to reduce sexually-transmitted HIV infection because three studies determined that (voluntary, adult) circumcision reduces the risk of female-to-male HIV infection through vaginal intercourse. By what standards do you think the program’s coordinators will use to judge the program successful in reducing HIV transmission among the four-year-olds? When will they reach their conclusion?

On Ross Douthat Joining the New York Times

The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat is the new conservative columnist for The New York Times. I haven’t read enough of his work to suggest that this is unwarranted. And he is, in fact, a talented writer. It’s just that I’ve been unimpressed with his thinking whenever I’ve encountered it. He shows very little interest in liberty or constructing a government that respects the interests of those with whom he disagrees.

In this entry from early last year, I criticized Mr. Douthat’s thinking on two topics, prostitution and infant circumcision. His position in both cases was objectively weak, at best. I’ll leave you to follow the link for my challenge to his views on prostitution. Here, I’d like to repost what I wrote in response to his tongue-in-cheek-yet-mind-numbingly-stupid view on infant circumcision.

**********

Of course, since it’s apparently okay to ask questions unrelated to the topic, let me ask a question: Why is it automatically self-harm worthy of prohibition for an individual to sell sex, even when it’s voluntarily sold, yet it’s reasonable to permit parents to surgically alter the genitals of their healthy sons – who may or may not approve of such permanent, physical alteration – as Mr. Douthat suggested last year in defense of infant circumcision?

The answer to how one person can hold two incongruent opinions rather obviously rests in a willingness to use personal, subjective tastes and preferences to inform the legal code of a diverse, secular, civil society. It’s the same central planner impulse that resides in every individual who seeks to dictate which freedoms are abhorrent.

Since I’m off on the tangent, in that entry, Mr. Douthat states:

Proponents, like myself, point out that even saying the word smegma is really disgusting. Again, I think we pretty much win the debate right there, without even getting into the whole HIV question.

I get the tongue-in-cheek nature of the comment, whether he meant it or not. I think he did because I think he views circumcision as inconsequential. (Remember subjective tastes and preferences?) But any understanding of human biology demonstrates the stupidity of such an argument. Female genitals produce smegma, as well. We do not cut female minors for that reason. Or, more to the point, we do not permit parents to cut their daughters just because they, the parents, are disgusted by the mere mention of the word. We manage to find the correct reasoning to prohibit that. But for males, parents can use only the mere mention of smegma as an excuse to cut. Or they can reject even that reason and order it because it’s fun to check “yes” on the consent form. The law is based on our conditioned beliefs rather than facts.

**********

This wasn’t in my original response, but it warrants a comment in light of the weight Mr. Douthat’s opinions will now receive because he is a columnist for The New York Times. From his entry on circumcision (emphasis in original):

… I believe I have the weight of the American experience on my side when I say that any such dampening [of sexual pleasure] would have to be extremely negligible.

He proves that he can’t possibly know this from experience with his next sentence:

All of which is to say that I’m gratified that my parents took it upon themselves to have a procedure performed on my infant self …

Without any sexual experience with his foreskin, he knows it’s “extremely negligible”. How? “I have experience with one side of the debate, so I am an expert on both sides of the debate” is not a sign of a great thinker. It is a sign of a mind interested in selecting the necessary facts to reach a desired, self-centered conclusion. I’m unimpressed.